Gray
by Hyenaraptor
Summary: From the day they met he'd sworn a silent promise to protect her with his very life. He kept that promise.


Gray was not a color often associated with Pandora.

The bandit shanty town had been razed to nothing in a matter of minutes. Ramshackle buildings that remained standing did so only as blackened frames that stood stark against the overcast sky, made ever bleaker by the hanging clouds of smoke that oozed upward long after their fires had already died out. The trampled ground between them had become a graveyard; not so much for the bandits, who'd barely known what hit them and were left as little more than faded red streaks in the dirt, but for the hordes of military-grade Hyperion robots that lay in smoldering, dismantled heaps as far as it was possible to see. A swirling mist of dust and smoke clung to the toppled wreckage of their figures, obscuring them, lending them the appearance of the skeletons of some ancient race of metallic giants fallen in battle. Everywhere, it was gray. Lifeless gray. Unnaturally so. Pandora was not a gray planet.

Not a soul stirred amidst the complete and utter decimation; by all assumptions nothing could have survived. But the faintest flutter of an eyelid proved otherwise.

Maya opened her eyes.

The pain hit her like a swooping rakk – a throbbing twinge right at the front of her skull that made her teeth grind and eyes water. She decided she probably didn't have time to worry about that now; instead she dug her elbows into the dirt and struggled to push herself upright, though soreness and exhaustion seemed intent on shoving her back down. Her hair was stuck to the side of her face, moist and uncomfortable, and when she reached up to brush it aside her hand came back bloody.

_Goddamn._

She attempted to lean slightly on her right arm, and yelped when a bolt of pain shot from her bicep downward like lightning; two good-sized pieces of shrapnel were embedded in her flesh, just below the shoulder, leaking thin rivulets of blood. Digging her teeth into her bottom lip she brought herself to a kneel and, before she could allow herself any time for hesitation, ripped them out with a single swift tug.

The searing pain was almost enough to make her cry out but she choked it back – surely she'd had it worse than this before. She didn't have any healing syringes tucked into her belt, either (of course), but luckily for her she had other means of taking care of these kinds of problems. Gently she laid the palm of her left hand flat against the gushing wounds; a soft blue light trailed its way along the intricate pattern of tattoos decorating her skin, until it reached the spot she touched. Just a few moments later nothing remained of the injuries but a mild itching sensation where the muscle had knitted itself back together.

A sudden wave of tiredness crashed against her and she swayed – using her powers to heal wounds tended to put a strain on her energy reserves, so she only ever did so in a pinch. Slowly, carefully, she got to her feet, giving her body time to shake off the fatigue that turned her legs into wobbly gelatinous tubes. The haze in her brain well matched the haze that surrounded her on all sides; it was impossible to see more than a few feet ahead of her at a time, which immediately put her further on edge.

Standing there, alone, exposed, watching the sparse rain of ashes drift down from a colorless sky, she shivered with a cold that seemed to emanate from inside her.

_How could this have happened?_

Maya began picking her way across the battlefield, weaving around mangled bandit corpses and the severed mechanical limbs of Hyperion loaders that were difficult to see until she was nearly on top of them. Her path felt as aimless as her own thoughts, which she struggled to piece back together into something coherent as they trickled back into her brain. Something that could remind her what the _fuck_ had happened here before she'd blacked out. How long had she been out?

_It… it was just another ordinary mission…_ she thought to herself, gazing in total bewilderment at the motionless silhouettes of loader after loader through the smoke. _Shit we do all the time. Hit a bandit camp, clear it out... it should've been nothing…_

Jack must've known they'd be there.

Her hands curled themselves into fists, the surge of anger that rushed through her enough to cause her tattoos to flash a dangerous shade of blue. _He ambushed us._ That had to be it. _The motherfucker_ ambushed_ us._ _Somehow he found out we were gonna be here today – through eavesdropping or a tip-off or God only knows what, the crafty bastard – and he sent the loaders in to catch us off guard. Krieg and I-_

Jarring realization stopped her dead in her tracks and turned every last drop of blood in her veins to ice.

She hadn't come here alone.

"Krieg…?" she said aloud; her voice quavered with an undertone of fear. She whirled around, yelling into the drifting smog behind her. "Krieg!"

The silence seemed to swallow her shout whole – there was no response. Dread dropped into her gut like a lead weight; Krieg never strayed far from her side. _Ever_.

Maya dashed into the fog as fast as her unsteady legs would carry her, frantically calling her friend's name, an anxious war cry that seemed to go nowhere. She knew it wasn't a good idea – her voice could easily attract more unwelcome attention – but right now, she didn't care. She just kept running, only pausing to make sure that any broken bodies she stepped over weren't _his_…

A massive shape materialized out of the smoke and she skidded to a halt, her shoes kicking up twin puffs of dust. She had to crane her neck to see the entire thing though it was toppled over on its side – a loader, not unlike the others that lay in pieces around it, but at least twice as big and outfitted with enough offensive weaponry to obliterate a small army single-handedly. Its metallic skin was painted a vivid blood-red, visible now only in patches where it hadn't been corroded by the intense heat of the explosion that'd most certainly destroyed it…

It hit her then. It hit her like a punch to the gut and she remembered everything. In stark, vivid detail.

_The air was alive with the cacophony of war – bullets whistled by her head close enough to hear and clashed with the sounds of buildings and machinery exploding into fiery rubble left and right. They'd come here to drive out bandits, a fairly mundane task for a pair of experienced Vault Hunters; but now what bandits hadn't been blown to bits had fled for their lives and left them to deal with dozens of Hyperion's robotic soldiers that had overtaken them out of seemingly nowhere._

_At first it seemed as though they might win this fight – when they were together, she and Krieg were nigh on unstoppable, her Siren powers immobilizing targets while he moved in like a human tornado, cleaving through anything that stood before him with bloody glee. A deadly duo, a force to be reckoned with. But as her energy began to wane and the loaders just kept coming, with their emotionless recorded voices parroting commands and footsteps that shook the ground beneath them, panic began to knot her stomach. She couldn't see Krieg through the smoke and flames, couldn't even _hear_ him, and though she feared for her companion's safety she was forced to turn her attention back to the advancing loaders. Her tattoos flashed azure fire and the group of robots was lifted in nearly a dozen otherworldly blue spheres that trapped them, levitated them helplessly in the air. She tightened her focus, channeling all she had in her to keep them that way, but it was getting steadily more difficult; she was already exhausted from pushing herself so hard, and she knew she wouldn't be able to hold them for long without putting herself in serious danger. Gritting her teeth, she began to tighten the spheres inward on themselves, slowly constricting, crushing the loaders like tin cans in a trash compactor…_

_She was so focused on her task that she didn't notice the giant loader that had marched up on them, towering high above its fellows, a great red beacon of destruction homing in on its targets. Pausing several yards behind her, it locked its large optic lens onto her vulnerable back, and charged the cannons on its arms for a shot that would wipe her off the face of the planet…_

_An enraged roar split the air and suddenly, there was Krieg, hurtling out of the smog towards the unsuspecting loader, buzz-axe held high. Maya glanced back just in time to see him seize hold of its right arm, dangling several feet above the ground and swinging with the momentum of his jump._

_The sudden extra weight on one side unbalanced the giant loader, forcing it to twist with Krieg's bulk and shift its attention from her. It spun the upper half of its body like a massive mechanical bull in an attempt to shake the psycho off, but even then he stubbornly held on, clambering up its arm and across the missile launchers on its shoulders until he stood directly on top of it..._

_The half-crushed loaders suspended in the energy spheres fell to the mud forgotten as Maya whirled around and saw Krieg raise his buzz-axe with all the triumphant flair of a knight about to fell a mighty dragon._

"_NOT MY SIREN!" he shouted, and plunged the weapon through the loader's optic lens and into its volatile mechanical core._

_The loader detonated with the force of a bomb, knocking Maya off her feet. The ringing in her ears drowned out all other sounds, so that she couldn't even hear the cry that passed through her own lips as she watched the gigantic machine, enveloped in flames, slowly crumple to the ground._

"KRIEG_!"_

_Something struck her in the forehead – some flying piece of debris – and everything went black._

The chill from the cold sweat beading her skin seemed to seep into her very bones. She staggered forward, pressing shaking hands to the still-warm metal as if to move it, or maybe find some kind of explanation for this nightmare etched into its scarred red surface…

That's when she saw it. On the ground to her right, so obscured by the heavy wreckage that it'd be easy to miss from any further distance away: a muscular human arm, jutting out from underneath the loader, blackened and clad in a heavy iron gauntlet.

"No! NO!"

Fueled by a rush of terror and adrenaline, her reaction was purely instinctual – tattoos ablaze with torrents of blue light, the Hyperion robot beneath her fingers was encapsulated in a shimmering transparent orb, bigger than any she'd ever made before. With every ounce of energy she could afford to use she levitated the smoldering heap of scrap until its entire weight was off the ground, just barely high enough; by the profuse shaking of her limbs it may as well have been a physical effort.

Crying out she threw the loader clear of them; it crashed into the churned mud several yards away with a dull clap of metallic thunder. She barely felt the strength ebb from her though it brought her to her knees and made the world swim before her eyes. She could only crawl, crawl until she reached the spot where her companion lay silent and unmoving.

"No… nonono… nonononono please, please God, no…"

He was badly hurt. Oh God, he was badly, _badly_ hurt. Horrific burns covered most of his bare torso, the likes of which not even his oddly resilient skin could hope to repair; what wasn't scorched black was bruised a sickly purplish-green by the crushing weight of the loader. Jagged pieces of shrapnel launched by the explosion had sliced through him like swords, impaled him, the wounds dripping dark blood into an ever-growing pool around his body. Through one particularly large, deep gash on his abdomen she could glimpse the glistening tangles of his entrails.

The thick stench of blood mingling with burnt flesh made her sick to her stomach; she turned away, her stomach heaving with revulsion though there was nothing in it to bring back up. She was no stranger to such scents, of course – after living on Pandora a while you got used to them – but simply knowing that this time it was coming from somebody so close to her gave her the horrible feeling that she'd never be able to fully purge it from her nostrils.

Something grasped at her pant leg, so softly she almost didn't feel it. She turned and brought a hand to her mouth; Krieg's seared fingers, as impossible as it seemed, gripped the fabric tightly. A low, blood-choked gurgle bubbled up from within his chest, culminating in a single desperate word that seemed to wrench itself from this body that still inexplicably clawed at life:

"…Maya…"

Her heart shattered.

_That's my boy. The most indestructible man on Pandora._

"Krieg! Krieg, oh my God…" She was kneeling at his shoulder in seconds, cupping a soft hand underneath his head and lifting it as gently as she possibly could. His mask – the one object he downright refused to go anywhere without, clung to like a child might a favorite blanket – came apart like the pieces of a broken eggshell, leaving only its tattered leather straps buckled around his head and revealing the scarred visage he fought so hard to keep hidden from judgmental eyes. He didn't seem to notice. His attention was fixated solely on her face, dull orange eye regarding her with all its usual wonder and adoration as though the mere sight of her was enough to breathe life back into his failing body.

It was so hard to stem the flow of tears. "It's… it's gonna be okay, Krieg. We're gonna fix this…" Carefully she slipped her arms around his chest and pulled him up against her lap, straining a bit with his weight, until the back of his head rested against her belly. For a moment she just held him close, her palms flat against his chest where the agonizing burns didn't mar his skin. His heartbeat was barely a flutter against her fingertips, his breaths coming fast and shallow. He didn't have much time left and there wasn't a single health syringe between their two belts (though not even a dozen of them could fix this level of injury).

But... she glanced at the intricate, swirling tattoos wrapping around her left arm that almost seemed to undulate with a life all their own.

She didn't need them.

Her gaze flickered back down to the psycho in her lap. His eye was closed, with only the continued fluttering of his pulse to confirm that he was still alive. Barely.

She could use her powers to heal him – there was nothing she wanted to do _more_ – but she'd never healed wounds as dire as these, certainly not all at once. Were she in peak condition such an expenditure of her energy would pose a serious risk to her safety; right now, in her severely weakened state, it could very well kill her. Was that a chance she was willing to take?

Staring down at him, this man who time and time again had proven his undying loyalty to her, had been her shoulder to lean on whenever she'd needed it, who now lay broken and dying in a pool of his own blood after saving her _life _– her dearest friend on this godforsaken planet – she knew it was. There was nobody who deserved it more.

_He'd do the same for me._

She took a deep, steadying breath. "Alright, big guy, this isn't gonna feel too pleasant, but it'll have you back on your feet in no time… just hold still…"

Pressing her left palm down ever so slightly, she began to release a gentle flow of healing energies into his body; a willful, almost intimate sharing of her life force with the person she trusted more than anybody she'd ever known. It spread out from beneath her hand like ripples on the surface of a pond, slowly but surely scarring over burned tissue, sealing lacerations, erasing bruises, abrasions, fractures like they'd never existed at all. And as her incredible powers worked their wonders she could feel them draining her of everything she had left. She was tired, so very, very tired and her Siren instincts were screaming at her to pull back, to conserve herself, but she ignored them.

This felt… like the right thing to do.

A massive hand wrapped itself around her left wrist, catching her by surprise – Krieg's hand. It held her with a firmness that she wouldn't have expected given his current condition and, with a soft squeeze, pushed her hand away, interrupting the healing process.

Her brows furrowed. "Krieg, I know it feels weird but please, let me do this. You need it…" She replaced her hand on his chest, quickly resuming the stream of energy, but was once again stopped by Krieg grabbing her wrist and insistently pushing it away. He stared quietly up at her, expression unreadable.

A pang of fear twisted her stomach. "Krieg…" The lump in her throat made it difficult to squeeze the name out. "Krieg, stop. You need to let me help you, okay…?" Maya was confused. She was trying to save him. Didn't he understand that?

Again her hand met his chest and again her tattoos flashed to life, and this time when Krieg pushed it away he held it there, delicate but unyielding. She didn't try to pull free, she didn't get angry or chastise him – she simply met his gaze with wet silver eyes full of pleading and desperation, willing herself to understand… _why_?

"K-Krieg…" Her voice cracked; it came out more like a sob. "Krieg, please…"

With the last ounces of strength he could muster Krieg lifted his other hand to cup the side of her face. A coarse thumb tenderly stroked the porcelain skin in silence while his bloodied lips twitched, trembled, waging a war for speech against both his warped mind and dying body.

"…Monster… stays down… so… his angel… stays… up…" he finally rasped. Those words, whispered with such conviction, such _care_, struck Maya to her core and made her face crumple, made her cling to his hand like a lifeline and press her cheek against its worn palm, unable to stop the tide of tears that washed twin paths through the blood and grime on her face and onto the calloused fingers that continued to caress it.

After a few moments he spoke again; she was barely able to make it out.

"…Thank… you…"

"Thank you? For what?" she asked. "…Krieg? _KRIEG_?"

He could've been sleeping, the way his eye was closed so peacefully beneath brows no longer creased by rage or anxiety, the corners of his mouth still upturned with the faintest hint of a smile. The face of a sweet, broken, heroic man content that the last thing he saw was the beautiful woman he'd laid down his life for – who'd given him a chance to be something more than a monster and he'd loved more than anything in the universe.

She couldn't let go of him. She didn't want to. Her slender arms encircled his shoulders and held him so tightly though she knew he couldn't feel it and he never would again. A hollowness had settled into her heart, like the grayness of the world around them had burrowed its way inside and left behind a numb hole she knew would never be filled. It felt like a part of her had died too and she couldn't even _begin_ to know how to deal with it. The part of her that'd nursed the special bond she'd shared with this strange but wonderful man despite all their differences. He was her companion. Her best friend. Her partner in crime and her protector. And Jack had stolen him from her.

For the first time, in all her twenty-seven years of carefully-controlled existence... Maya felt alone. Small, weak, and truly, truly alone.

_So this is grief._

Turning her face to the cold, sunless void of the sky above, bleeding ashes onto the Pandoran soil, she allowed herself a luxury she almost never did.

She wept.


End file.
